[python] Debugging the error "gcc: error: x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc: No such file or directory"

After a fair amount of work, I was able to get it to build on Ubuntu 12.04 x86 and Debian 7.4 x86_64. I wrote up a guide below. Can you please try following it to see if it resolves the issue?

If not please let me know where you get stuck.

Install Common Dependencies

sudo apt-get install build-essential autoconf libtool pkg-config python-opengl python-imaging python-pyrex python-pyside.qtopengl idle-python2.7 qt4-dev-tools qt4-designer libqtgui4 libqtcore4 libqt4-xml libqt4-test libqt4-script libqt4-network libqt4-dbus python-qt4 python-qt4-gl libgle3 python-dev

Install NumArray 1.5.2

wget http://goo.gl/6gL0q3 -O numarray-1.5.2.tgz
tar xfvz numarray-1.5.2.tgz
cd numarray-1.5.2
sudo python setup.py install

Install Numeric 23.8

wget http://goo.gl/PxaHFW -O numeric-23.8.tgz
tar xfvz numeric-23.8.tgz
cd Numeric-23.8
sudo python setup.py install

Install HDF5 1.6.5

wget ftp://ftp.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/releases/hdf5-1.6/hdf5-1.6.5.tar.gz
tar xfvz hdf5-1.6.5.tar.gz
cd hdf5-1.6.5
./configure --prefix=/usr/local
sudo make 
sudo make install

Install Nanoengineer

git clone https://github.com/kanzure/nanoengineer.git
cd nanoengineer
./bootstrap
./configure
make
sudo make install

Troubleshooting

On Debian Jessie, you will receive the error message that cant pants mentioned. There seems to be an issue in the automake scripts. x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc is inserted in CFLAGS and gcc will interpret that as a name of one of the source files. As a workaround, let's create an empty file with that name. Empty so that it won't change the program and that very name so that compiler picks it up. From the cloned nanoengineer directory, run this command to make gcc happy (it is a hack yes, but it does work) ...

touch sim/src/x86_64-linux-gnu-gcc

If you receive an error message when attemping to compile HDF5 along the lines of: "error: call to ‘__open_missing_mode’ declared with attribute error: open with O_CREAT in second argument needs 3 arguments", then modify the file perform/zip_perf.c, line 548 to look like the following and then rerun make...

output = open(filename, O_RDWR | O_CREAT, S_IRUSR|S_IWUSR);

If you receive an error message about Numeric/arrayobject.h not being found when building Nanoengineer, try running

export CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/python2.7
./configure
make
sudo make install

If you receive an error message similar to "TRACE_PREFIX undeclared", modify the file sim/src/simhelp.c lines 38 to 41 to look like this and re-run make:

#ifdef DISTUTILS
static char tracePrefix[] = "";
#else
static char tracePrefix[] = "";

If you receive an error message when trying to launch NanoEngineer-1 that mentions something similar to "cannot import name GL_ARRAY_BUFFER_ARB", modify the lines in the following files

/usr/local/bin/NanoEngineer1_0.9.2.app/program/graphics/drawing/setup_draw.py
/usr/local/bin/NanoEngineer1_0.9.2.app/program/graphics/drawing/GLPrimitiveBuffer.py
/usr/local/bin/NanoEngineer1_0.9.2.app/program/prototype/test_drawing.py

that look like this:

from OpenGL.GL import GL_ARRAY_BUFFER_ARB
from OpenGL.GL import GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER_ARB

to look like this:

from OpenGL.GL.ARB.vertex_buffer_object import GL_ARRAY_BUFFER_AR
from OpenGL.GL.ARB.vertex_buffer_object import GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER_ARB

I also found an additional troubleshooting text file that has been removed, but you can find it here